A Russian Speaking Reader Shares His Experience With A New Kind Of Refugee — Meskhetian Turks

By VDARE.com Reader

08/10/2013

Steve Sailer’s blog post Meskhetian Turkish Refugee Streetracers: National Immigration Safety Board Needed

From: A Russian Speaking Reader

I read the Steve Sailer’s post about the Meskhetian Turks. I know a little of them, because I worked closely with them for a couple of years.

I learned that a program was looking for volunteer tutors who could speak Russian. Remembering my elders from Russia, and their neighbors, (Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians), I looked forward to helping people from Europe.

The refugees were not the Europeans I expected to meet. Instead of being European and Christian, they were Muslim Turks. With individual exceptions, the impressions I left with were not very favorable.

Because we could understand one another, they spoke very freely. Their most common sentiment, which they expressed shamelessly, was that America owed them a living; that we should support them for the rest of their lives, for all that they had been through.

This is what Meskhetian Turks have been through:

Stalin, a Georgian, ordered them deported from Georgia, once the German threat had receded. He accused them of collaborating with the Nazis. This was most likely not the reason, for the Germans never got close enough to the Meskhetians to be able to recruit them.

The Meskhetians were banished to Central Asia, to places like Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and so on, where their Muslim co-religionists live. However, even the Muslims of those regions grew to hate them. You see, the reason they were persecuted (contrary to the reason offered by the U.N., that they are "very industrious"), is that they are lazy. And indeed, natural selection has sharply honed these instincts in them. Lying and stealing are virtues.

By 1990, the Muslim republics in which they resided had had enough of them, and began expelling them. So they became "internal refugees" in the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union broke up, and the Muslim republics became independent, the Meskhetians became stateless, because the Russian Federation would not grant them citizenship. More intolerable for these Turks was the fact that the Russian government forced them to work, in exchange for food and supplies. Their very notion of "persecution"!

So began their campaign to be recognized by the UN as "internal refugees", who could apply for asylum in other countries — and Russia was more than happy to rid themselves of the Meskhetian Turks. Turkey offered to take them, but they refused, because Istanbul would have required the men to serve in the army. The Meskhetians wanted no part of that!

Instead, they asked to be admitted as refugees to Western Europe and America and Canada. In Western countries, particularly those in Europe, they could live on public assistance for extended periods — years in fact — without being expected to work.

Once in America, most Meskhetians resisted job placement as best they could. They would play up the stupidity angle in order to fail job interviews, or once placed in a job, would fail to show up. Only when the state finally cut off their public assistance, would they go to work. But a few families were eager to take jobs as soon as they were offered.

It never ceased to amaze me at how they could con others into doing things for them. I once observed a magnet school teacher take a Meskhetian student aside, for the purpose of having the student re-take an exam she had failed. This teacher began by telling the girl how to work out the problems in the test. The Meskhetian girl just sat there, waiting. And her wait was rewarded, because the teacher began to work out the problems for her. She passed the test. Within 1 year this girl was married off by her parents and taken out of school. Like most of her peers, she did not finish high school. So her family wasted the efforts of school district officials, who went through a lot of effort to give a "Russian girl" an opportunity. At the same time, a deserving child was denied the opportunity.

Only one family overcame that pattern and kept their daughter in high school. After graduation, she went to college. It was the only Meskhetian family that valued higher education for girls.

There are many stories I could tell, but not enough space for them.

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